Car park plans submitted

Friday Street layout revealed

Plans for the extra level on Friday Street car park are being unveiled as Chorley Council submits a planning application for the 96-space extension.

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The authority has been working on the design for a number of weeks as part of its plans to increase the number of parking spaces in the town centre ahead of work starting on the Market Walk extension.

The move to create extra spaces on Friday Street is in response to feedback from traders and shoppers who would like to see more parking spaces in place before construction starts on the Flat Iron site.

Councillor Alistair Bradley, Leader of Chorley Council, said: “When we committed to building the Market Walk extension earlier this year we said we would get the additional parking in place first and a key part of this has been putting plans together for the extra level on Friday Street.

“We’ve taken feedback on board from residents and traders and have compromised on the number of extra spaces to create wider parking bays making it more appealing to shoppers.

“We know there is a perception that it is out of the town centre but it is actually closer to the new extension than many of the other car parks and we will be doing work to make that walk easier by improving things such as the crossing over the by-pass to make it more pedestrian friendly.”

Planning permission for the extra level was submitted last week and if approved it will provide an extra 96 spaces with a new entrance to the car park off Brunswick Street making it easier to access for motorists.

It is one of a number of schemes to create extra parking with demolition due to start on the Royal Oak site within the next week to make way for extra spaces.

“This work is all part of our plans to get us ready for the Market Walk extension, which will bring a cinema, new shops and restaurants into the town centre and widen the excellent independent offer that we already have,” said Councillor Bradley.

“Not only that the shopping centre provides us with income of £1 million per year, which is allowing us to maintain services and keep council tax rises to a minimum, and the extension could generate hundreds of thousands of pounds on top of that.

“This work is going to improve our town centre, bring in more visitors and at the same time provides a vital income to this authority allowing us to offset the huge cuts in our government grant.

“We’ve already seen the success of the youth zone, which is the first of the major town centre projects to be completed, and the shopping centre extension will help us to build on that success and give our town centre a long term future.”

The council has already temporarily opened up around an extra 100 spaces on the Flat Iron car park to provide extra capacity while the work is carried out on Friday Street and it will be making Portland Street a long stay car park from early June to provide extra long stay parking while Friday Street is out of action.

The planning application is due to be determined next month and if approved work on constructing the extra level would start in July. You can view more details on the planning application here.